I wrote my masterpiece. This was its final day, the closing of the final page. It had evaded me for some time, a single word on which to end. Each prior attempt had failed to fit with the neatness I desired. It needed to be perfect, of course. It was the pinnacle, the triumphant climax, and a single word could make or break the finale.
You would think that the options available to me would be quite limited, and in truth they were. I knew the scene that I was writing. I knew what needed to be said. There were only so many ways to say it, but the last one became the right one, and its discovery was a long time coming. It arrived in the dead of a sleepless night; an unannounced visitor bearing what would become the crowning jewel of victory. My Masterpiece.
I wrote my masterpiece. Now, at its completion, I struggle to recall its origins. The first pages feel like a lifetime ago, and reading them opens a window on the past. In the lines of sprawling fiction lie the subtext of a life once lived.
How I have changed. For better or worse is unclear, but without a doubt I write a record of my early self. The words and actions of fictional characters, formed on page, betray forgotten thoughts. Their turmoil and celebration; my life tucked away inside the words, in such a way that only I may find my way back to them. The chapters follow a journey that they do not mention. Indeed, it has been a long road travelled, but I have arrived. I am weary, but it is done. My Masterpiece.
I wrote my masterpiece. A vacuum of time and attention, a seemingly endless task that at first expanded faster than I could could reign it in. I was as a sculptor who, having formed one face of the stone, would move around to find yet another blank one awaiting him. My stone became a mountain of uncountable sides. It spread throughout my brain, travelling across every synapse, redirecting thought and movement to accommodate what consumed me.
Even the unconscious ideas of an absent hour were taken and pressed into its pages. Every witty line, every fleeting fantasy. Creative thought of any kind harnessed and integrated into my work. The mental resources at my disposal were dedicated to making each line worthy of reading, the dialogue sparkle, and every character come alive. In turn, my own soul dried up. Conversation forced and rigid, more logical than meaningful. Scribblings and doodles, amusing yet painfully talentless cartoons to pass a moment, lacked any of their usual quirkiness and charm. I faded to something wholly unoriginal; the price of preventing my work from becoming exactly that. It is the channelled culmination of my lost passion. Years of my own life, filtered and refined. My Masterpiece.
I wrote my masterpiece. Sacrifices have been made, of course, but in the name of doing justice to a sprawling epic such as this. Now all that is left is to write the glimpse of what lies beneath; the quick whisper to entice the reader, pressed onto the reverse of the thick paperback. This is the key, the bait that draws the eye and announces in a moment all that will come in the days, even weeks to follow.
I search the defining traits of my modern odyssey; the highs and lows, peaks of elation and plunging depths of despair. The twists and turns whose extent remains hidden, whilst the hint lies suggestively at the surface. Yet as I trace the edges of my finely crafted work, its shape feels all too familiar. My fingers run across it, flicking through pages and scanning words with their tips. Each feature that I pluck from the fiction, once isolated feels shallow and dull. As I break them down too their simplest of forms, their basis slips and clicks into place with convention and cliché. To describe them now in this shortest of ways, it is as if I outline any major work I have ever read with my own eyes.
Did I not create them of my own mind? Are these not the fruits of my own labour? Why then, when all is said and done, have I drawn new lines through the same dots as so many others before me? Nameless and bare, the turmoil of my star crossed lovers is already faced and conquered; the climax of my mystery already reached. My wars fought, my battles won.
I attempt in vain to define what I once had called unique. Is there nothing left but to redefine that which I have simply retold?
I burned my masterpiece.